How Human Psychology Holds Back Climate Change Action

Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Cass R. Sunstein writes at Bloomberg that an understanding of human psychology — specifically, what human beings fear and what they do not — helps to explain why nations haven't insisted on more significant emissions reductions even as scientists warn that if the world continues on its current course, we will face exceedingly serious losses and threats including a significant rise in sea levels by century's end. First, people tend to be especially focused on risks or hazards that have an identifiable perpetrator, and for that reason produce outrage. 'Warmer temperatures are a product not of any particular human being or group, but the interaction between nature and countless decisions by countless people. There are no obvious devils or demons — no individuals who intend to create the harms associated with climate change.' The second obstacle is that people tend to evaluate risks by way of 'the availability heuristic,' which leads them to assess the probability of harm by asking whether a readily available example comes to mind. For example, an act of terrorism is likely to be both available and salient, and hence makes people fear that another such event will occur. A recent crime or accident can activate attention and significantly inflate people's assessment of risk. Finally, human beings are far more attentive to immediate threats than to long-term ones. They may neglect the future, seeing it as a kind of foreign country, one they may not ever visit. For this reason, they might fail to save for retirement, or they might engage in risk-taking behavior such as smoking or unhealthy eating that will harm their future selves. 'All the obstacles are daunting skepticism about the science, economic self-interest, and the difficulties of designing cost-effective approaches and obtaining an international agreement,' concludes Sunstein, 'But the world is unlikely to make much progress on climate change until the barrier of human psychology is squarely addressed.'"

Comments

Uhg, not Cass Sunstein

[geek]

This is the same guy that thinks animals should have a right to sue people:

http://www.opposingviews.com/i/cass-sunstein-proposes-that-animals-should-have-legal-right-to-sue

Nothing this guy says should be taken seriously.

Re:Uhg, not Cass Sunstein

[khallow]

What they did actually worked to a large degree and things don't seem so bad unless your a Anne Rand level Libertarian.

Why is the EPA still pushing through new regulations? Why is it finding novel and unconstitutional ways to enforce its regulations?

The couple, Chantell and Michael Sackett, had started to fill the home site with dirt and gravel to prepare for construction. But the EPA intervened, announcing that the property was a regulated wetland. Agency officials ordered the couple to restore the land to its original state or face up to $75,000 a day in fines.

The Sacketts disputed the EPA's wetland designation and filed a lawsuit to litigate the issue in federal court.

The EPA argued that the Sacketts' lawsuit must be dismissed because the EPA's Clean Water Act compliance order did not amount to final agency action.

In other words, the EPA claimed that the plaintiff's didn't have standing to sue the EPA even though they were being fined by the EPA $75,000 a day if they didn't comply with costly reversal of their construction efforts. One doesn't have to be an Objectivist to think that's very unfair.

The thing here is that the EPA pretty much fixed the problems that led to its creation. Yet it's still growing. It should be like a fire department where it's funded a fixed amount to do a set job and doesn't keep enlarging itself to do more and control more.

And the EPA is far from alone in this mission creep. The NSA is another fine example which has extended itself to the point where it's eavesdropping on the entire world. A little while back in the Fast and Furious scandal the ATF was equipping the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico with high quality US firearms under the pretext of trying to stop gun smuggling. And it appears that such guns were found at crime scenes involving more than 200 murder victims in Mexico and the US.

Right...

[lightknight]

Because there must be something psychologically invalid about the people who do not 'believe' as you do...it could not be, I don't know, that you have not made a strong argument for the position you are taking.

Re: What's next Cass?

[Waffle Iron]

Maybe Cass can use the same explanation to explain our $16 Trillion debt.

The same explanation does hold in both cases. The main difference is that climate is a real physical phenomenon, whereas money is purely psychological. It's a measure of intention that people try to keep track of using rewriteable magnetic patterns on spinning disks.

I concluded long ago that due to human nature, nothing will be done about climate change until the resulting unfolding disasters force people to make desperate feats of geoengineering to attempt to reverse the damage. The cost of those efforts is probably going to make $16T look like a drop in the bucket.